Tuesday, December 15, 2015

I’ve been meaning to write for a while
about a insightful and timely article written by Michael Caster – “Matching
Resistance to Repression in China” – which was published on April 8, 2015
in Open Democracy. I now have no more excuses for procrastinating after police
actions were launched last week against Chinese labor activists in the southern
Chinese city of Guangzhou. To date, at least five activists have been
criminally detained, while others have been interrogated and released, and
computers confiscated from their offices[1].

What inspires me to write this post is not
the police action but the vigorous response by Chinese workers and civil
society activists, organizations and their supporters. Their firm, courageous
stance in the face of state power touches on the important question of how
civil society, particularly those working in authoritarian systems, should
respond to state repression. Borrowing insights from Caster’s article, I’d like
to propose some ways of thinking about this question. Recognizing the difficult
and unpredictable nature of civil society actions in hostile environments like
China, I hesitate to offer any hard and fast prescriptions. Instead, I’d like
to think of this post as the first in a series of meditations on the subject,
offering ways to rethink our response to state repression.

My starting point is an observation made by
Caster:

Throughout 2013 to 2014, I remember many
grassroots activists around China relating to me their perceptions that the
ferocity of government repression should be understood as steadily increasing
pressure, not as a swift crackdown. It is severe and inexcusable, without
question, but in this sense it is more similar to the ‘frog in boiling water’
folk tale than the sudden purges of past dictatorships.

I think this point deserves to be
highlighted and emphasized again and again. Repression should be seen not as a one-off
crackdown by an omnipresent state, but as a series of police and extrajudicial
actions to exert, in Caster’s words, “steadily increasing pressure” on civil
society. I’ve always disliked the word crackdown because it suggests an action
without any history or context or follow up. “Crackdown” is also a useful,
catch-all term used to refer to any seemingly repressive action by the state
ranging from unfriendly regulations to a police raid. But every crackdown has a
backstory, a history, and is part of a series of past and follow up actions by
the state and civil society. In addition, the word crackdown magnifies the
power of the state by suggesting that it has put an end to the activities of
the activists or NGOs in question. The June 4 crackdown on protestors in 1989
came close to this meaning, but the vast majority of “crackdowns” lack the
finality of June 4. Repression, harassment, raids, police actions all come to
mind as better alternatives to the term “crackdown”.

Borrowing a chess metaphor, the term
crackdown sees repression as as an endgame situation of getting to checkmate in
a few moves where one side emerges victorious and the other is
extinguished.But if we see repression
more as a series of actions designed to exert pressure on the activist or NGO,
then the more appropriate chess metaphor is that of a long endgame in which
both sides are seeking positional advantage. This latter situation is what we
are dealing with in post-1989 China.

A second point I would make is that repression should not be seen as
coming from a monolithic, all-powerful state, but from specific state actors. Given
the opacity of the Chinese state, it’s almost impossible to know with any
certainty where the order for the repression originated. But we do know enough
about the Chinese state to know that it is far from monolithic or unified, and
that there are many departments and localities within the state with different,
and even conflicting, interests and agendas. Decisions to harass or detain
activists or close down an NGO are made within this system and shaped by this
interest-based logic. We know that many actions against civil society over the
last two decades have come from local authorities or from specific departments
or individuals that view activists, NGOs, bloggers, lawyers and others as a
threat to their interests.

Changing our perception and naming of repression is
important because it recalibrates the challenges facing civil society activists
and supporters, and the bar for what they can achieve, to a more realistic and
human level. Magnifying the size and scope of the threat and the necessary
response might be good for getting people’s attention, but it does not
stimulate intelligent, strategic decision making. On the contrary, it can lead
activists to either overreach or make bad decisions, as in the case of the 1989
protests or the Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong, or to question whether
they can do anything at all.

As the Davids facing the Goliath of the
state, civil society needs to identify achievable goals that can lead to small
achievements that will instill confidence in, empower and unify citizens who
come together because they wish to and can act. At the same time, civil society
also needs to consider, discuss and debate how these goals will help to bring
about a long-term, strategic objective whether that objective be a vibrant and independent
civil society or a more equal and tolerant society or a democratic regime. In Caster’s words,

Rather than pursuing
tactics of sudden unrest and demanding high-profile victories, more can
arguably be achieved – especially within a high-capacity authoritarian regime such
as China – through strategic actions, producing limited but sustained
improvements.

Baby steps, as my wife said when I told her
about this post. Baby steps for a nascent civil society sounds about right, but
baby steps with a grown up vision.